Photography - Night Sky

[AngryAnt]

I've seen more than just a few people with an interest in photography on the forum, so here goes.

I wanted to point out that this weekend is a pretty nice sweet spot for anybody that wants to try out night time photography. Its a new moon, there is one meteor shower peaking, another starting up, and the beginning of August is the best time to capture the Milky Way vertical in the sky without staying up until 4:00 AM.

I'd like to ride out and see what I can get this weekend, anybody else interested in seeing what they can come up with?

As a starter you need:

1. A camera with manual settings and a relatively wide angle lens
2. Any moderately heavy tripod
3. Patience (although a shutter release cable does wonders)

Start out on 800 ISO, with a 25 second exposure time, around f4 with your lens as wide as it'll go. Use manual focus, and try focusing on the brightest star in the sky to get a crisp focus.

If you take multiple exposures, you can try combining them into a single image (like the first one below) using stacking software, or stacking them to make a star trail, like the second one below. Both of these softwares are freely available on the internet.

The last couple night time shots I made months ago:

 

[karl213]

Sick pics :thumbup:

 

[flyingminno]

Wow, those are amazing pics! I would love too...but there's the long ride I would have to plan out first.

 

[dart1963]

here's a couple I did the other night with the "cheap" camera (wife's panasonic lumix FP3 in fireworks mode) and my kids playing with lights. Have played with my canon S2IX a bit at night, but find it just overloads, very noisy, when I set the exposure time up to 15 seconds, might have to look for that software and play with it a bit. Links???:

 

[AngryAnt]

This application is for stacking multiple exposures for a star trail:

Startrails application

This one aligns multiple exposures based on the stars themselves, blurring the background:

DeepSkyStacker - Free

The second one has a learning curve on it, but if you play with it for a half hour you can start getting results out of it.

All cameras are noisy to a degree at high ISO. Try downloading the trial to Adobe Lightroom, which is what I use. The Noise reduction features in it are really, really good.

You do have to ride out of the general city area at least 30 miles to get good pictures, but you can still get some interesting shots even 5-10 miles out.

 

[b_who]

Nice :thumbup:
those are some amazing pics

 

[Sage]

Thanks man, I've tried a few times to get star trails and other celstial photos but its been difficult. Great job! :thumbup:

 

[AngryAnt]

Thanks

If you have a a DSLR, even a low-end one, try looking into an offbrand intervelometer:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Aputure-Powershot-Compatible-Inexpensive-Intervalometer/dp/B003Y35VJA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1311715366&sr=8-5]Amazon.com: Aputure Timer Camera Remote Control Shutter Cable 1C for Canon EOS Rebel XT, XTi, XSi, XS, T1i, T2i, EOS 60D, 1000D, 550D, 500D, 450D, 400D, 350D, 300D, Canon Powershot G10, G11, G12 Fully Compatible with Canon RS 60-E3, Inexpensive Inter[/ame]

I spent $40 on mine, and it makes shooting night time shots *so* much easier, especially for star trails. You set the timer to take a 25 second exposure every 26 seconds, pop in a decent size memory card, and walk away. Come back in an hour, hope your lens hasn't fogged over, then take all your exposures and process them on the computer.

Additionally on cloudy nights, I'll make sure the batteries are charged, and let it sit out and automatically snap images until the battery runs out, and I'm sure to have at least a few salvageable frames I can touch up.

 

[dart1963]

def gotta play with that sw.. but it took a black pic and showed the trees... but somehow, I think it only used one pic... gonna play... meanwhile... 15 sec shots:

lavapit I set up:

and for some reason photobucket won't do tif... but I took a couple pics that appeared pitch black and the skytracker sw showed a perfect image (well, ok, an image) of the trees that I was sitting under, so it appears to be a great sw package for the price (It's FREE!), just have to learn all the knobs and controls.

 

[AngryAnt]

def gotta play with that sw.. but it took a black pic and showed the trees... but somehow, I think it only used one pic... gonna play... meanwhile... 15 sec shots:

lavapit I set up:

and for some reason photobucket won't do tif... but I took a couple pics that appeared pitch black and the skytracker sw showed a perfect image (well, ok, an image) of the trees that I was sitting under, so it appears to be a great sw package for the price (It's FREE!), just have to learn all the knobs and controls.

If you're talking about Deep Sky Stacker, yeah it has a steep learning curve. To save you some time, I got much better results exporting my photos to TIF or JPEG then loading them in DSS. After two weeks of wondering why everything turned out black, I figured out the program couldn't read RAW files for my camera (T2i/T3i) correctly.

1. Start out with TIF's or JPEG's, then load into DSS
2. Follow this tutorial step by step: My Quick DeepSkyStacker Tutorial « Flintstone Stargazing
3. Run your results through a post-processing software like photoshop, lightroom, or aperature for much better results.